Special Report: Columbia University

Soros Funds Next Generation of Liberal Journalism

By

Mike Ciandella

August 28, 2013 - 9:00am

Columbia University helps define the news business. Its School of Journalism is perhaps the foremost institution of its kind in the United States, and its alumni fill the ranks of news organizations. It is also home to the Pulitzer Prize – the top award in the industry. Each May, it graduates a new class and sends a fresh crop of young editors, writers and producers into the field.

Unfortunately, Columbia’s journalism program is not committed to honest journalism. Instead it delivers a one-sided education that celebrates left-wing policies and is overwhelmingly run by liberal journalists, most of whom work for liberal news outlets in addition to their jobs at the school. Sixty-eight percent of the full-time faculty at Columbia University School of Journalism write for explicitly left-wing news outlets. Many of the adjunct faculty and guest lecturers also work for these operations.

Columbia’s Journalism School professors have written for left-wing blogs calling Occupy Wall Street “sweet-tempered,” while bashing the Tea Party as “radicals.” They’ve also authored articles and books attacking Israel for “terrorizing” Gaza, ranted about how the fossil fuel industry’s “extraordinary corporate culture of discipline and secrecy” is destroying the environment, accused Republicans of using racist “code language,” and promoted liberal causes from socialized medicine to gun control to abortion. Columbia University President Lee Bollinger has repeatedly argued for massive government funding of journalism.

Columbia has received $9.7 million from left-wing billionaire George Soros, more support than he has given to all but three other schools. Soros is also connected to the newly appointed dean of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Steve Coll, is currently the head of the New America Foundation, a progressive public policy organization that has received $4.2 million from Soros since 2000.

The influence of Columbia University School of Journalism is substantial. Alumni have gotten jobs at such prominent media outlets as The New York Times, Bloomberg, ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, CNN, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and USA Today. Alumni have also worked at a number of left-wing outlets including Mother Jones, The Huffington Post, NPR and The Nation – the same operations their former professors staff.

The Media Research Center’s Business and Media Institute has extensively researched Columbia University School of Journalism, including its faculty, alumni, student publications, funding, guest lecturers, endorsements and awards. BMI found that there was a significant left-wing bias prevalent at the school – a bias that then migrates with its graduates to permeate the daily operations of news organizations across the United States. These results include the following:

68 Percent of the Professors Work for Liberal Outlets: The faculty list of the Columbia University School of Journalism reads like a Who’s Who of liberal organizations. Of the 40 full-time members of the faculty, 27 work at left-wing news outlets and organizations including The Huffington Post, Slate, Mother Jones, Salon, The Nation and Greenpeace. Adjunct faculty work at Al Jazeera, Alternet, The Daily Beast, Salon and The Nation. These professors are also cited as experts by major news outlets, such as The New York Times, ABC, CBS, The Washington Post and USA Today, thanks to their status as Columbia faculty.

More than $9.7 Million in Soros Funding: Columbia University has received $9,708,486 from liberal billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundation. That makes it the third-most Soros-funded school in the world, and the second-most in the U.S. The school also received an additional $1.63 million from the liberal Tides Foundation, which Soros also supports.

Soros-funded Liberal Leadership: Incoming dean Steve Coll has his own left-wing rap sheet. Coll, who will take over as dean of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in July 2013 is currently the president of the New America Foundation, a left-leaning public policy organization which has received more than $4.2 million in Soros funding since 2001. Before working at New America Foundation, Coll was managing editor at The Washington Post.

Ties to Terror-Friendly Al Jazeera: Al Jazeera English was awarded more than just the Columbia Award, the highest honor that Columbia could give. It was also granted a fellowship, and allowed to host its show, “Empire,” with a guest panel of full-time Columbia University School of Journalism professors. Al Jazeera employees work as adjunct faculty and guest lecturers, and the journalism school also listed Al Jazeera English and Current TV (which has been bought by Al Jazeera) as potential vendors at its upcoming jobs fair for 2013. Both were in attendance for the 2012 jobs fair. This is the same “news” organization that, in 2008, threw a birthday party for a Lebanese terrorist who had previously killed a police officer, a civilian and a 4-year-old girl.

Recommendations for Journalists

The Business and Media Institute has the following recommendations for journalists writing about Columbia School of Journalism.

Extreme Bias Damages Credibility: The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics states that journalists should “remain free of associations or activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.” When citing or interviewing a Columbia alumni or faculty member, it is important to be aware of any left-wing connections he or she might have.

Do Some Genuine Journalism and Investigate Major Donors: Left-wing billionaires donating millions of dollars to any organization should raise some eyebrows. Since 2000, Soros has given more than $500 million to liberal organizations in the U.S., underwriting almost every major liberal initiative. News outlets need to invest both time and effort to examine these connections.

Recommendations for Columbia University

The Business and Media Institute has the following recommendations for how Columbia can repair its reputation as a premier journalism school.

Hire Conservative Professors: The SPJ Code of Ethics states that journalists should “Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and shun secondary employment, political involvement, public office and service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integrity.” Twenty-seven of the 40 Columbia University School of Journalism full-time professors work for left-wing publications, while only three work at the moderately conservative Wall Street Journal, and one is a Fox News contributor (who also writes for left-wing outlets). In order to remain balanced, Columbia should hire more neutral and conservative journalists.

Refuse to Give a Platform to Those who Support Terrorists: Columbia needs to stop catering to the blatantly pro-terror news network, Al Jazeera. When Columbia University, as one of the foremost schools for journalism in the nation, not only entertains but promotes a blatantly anti-American and pro-terrorist news network, it undermines the nature of journalism.

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Columbia University is home to the only Ivy League graduate journalism school, and one of only three graduate journalism programs in the United States. The iconic brick and stone buildings house a program envisioned by legendary wizard of journalism Joseph Pulitzer. The students who are accepted know that they are getting one of the most respected journalism educations in the world. Their school is also the custodian of the Pulitzer Prize, the most coveted award in the field.

The influence of the Columbia University School of Journalism (CUSJ) is extensive. Alumni have gone on to hold significant jobs at prominent media outlets including all three broadcast news networks (ABC, NBC and CBS), CNN, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Bloomberg and NPR.

And that fact should worry anyone who values objectivity and balance in journalism. The school uses its position as a leading journalism institution to promote a liberal agenda that has sweeping impact on the news Americans consume.

Columbia recently saw a change of leadership when Steve Coll, former president of the liberal, Soros-funded New America Foundation, was named the new president of the Journalism School. He takes over the presidency for New Republic writer Nicholas Lemman. Coll has big plans for the school. “The Journalism School has a chance across the next decade to extend its leadership as an institution with worldwide influence,” he said in the press release for his appointment at the school.

But Coll’s résumé is mild compared to some of the professors on the staff. Todd Gitlin, a professor and chair of the journalism Ph.D. program, was one of the founders and first presidents of the radical left-wing group Students for a Democratic Society. Lately, Gitlin has been an outspoken supporter of the “amazingly intense,” “sweet tempered” Occupy movement. He is also listed on the journalism school’s site as a “faculty expert” on both ethics and American politics.

Victor Navasky, head of the prestigious Columbia Journalism Review, came to the school from The Nation. Navasky worked as editor of the hard-left magazine, where he still serves as Publisher Emeritus. Professor Betsy West was fired from CBS for her involvement in “Rathergate.” She now teaches “Video Storytelling” at Columbia.

Columbia rewards those who share a similar bias. Al Jazeera was not only presented with the highest award the school could give, but granted a fellowship as well. The pro-terror news network has repeatedly criticized Israel and even threw a birthday party for a Palestinian terrorist. To add to its blatant endorsement of the Qatari royal family-owned news network, Columbia hired an Al Jazeera anchor as an adjunct journalism professor. It also has invited several other Al Jazeera employees to speak as guest lecturers.

The rest of Columbia shares the ideology of the Journalism School. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spewed his Holocaust denial in the university’s lecture halls, and left-wing billionaire George Soros delivered an anti-Bush, anti-American rant at in the form of a commencement speech. Columbia’s obvious embrace of liberal views reinforces that proclivity in the journalism school, which promises to offer “a curriculum as pluralistic and polyphonic as New York itself.”

The Media Research Center’s Business and Media Institute has extensively researched Columbia University School of Journalism, including its faculty, alumni, student publications, funding, guest lecturers, influence, endorsements and awards. BMI found that there was a significant left-wing bias prevalent at the school.

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The faculty list of the Columbia University School of Journalism reads like a Who’s Who of left-wing organizations. Of the 40 full-time members of the faculty, 27 work at explicitly left-wing outlets including The Huffington Post, Slate, The American Prospect, Mother Jones, Salon, The Nation and Greenpeace.

The American Prospect in particular makes no secret of its bias: “We're liberal, progressive, lefty – call it what you want, we're proud of it.” The Huffington Post has become established as a news outlet, but not without a substantial liberal bias, especially evident in its newly launched video channel “HuffPost Live,” where Columbia Journalism alumnus and professor Ahmed Shihab-Eldin works as a host.

While National Public Radio is a taxpayer-funded news outlet, it consistently uses that funding to promote a liberal agenda, including pushing for higher taxes, campaigning against hydraulic natural gas “fracking” and speaking out against big business.

Many of these professors not only write for these liberal outlets, but actually work full-time for them as well. A few (Thomas B. Edsall with the Huffington Post, Todd Gitlin with Greenpeace and Victor Navasky with The Nation) have actually sat on the boards of these outlets.

The Media Consortium, to which many of these outlets belong, is a liberal echo chamber where blogs and news operations like The Nation, The American Prospect and Mother Jones can share ideas. The Media Consortium ($675,000), The Nation ($77,000), The American Prospect ($1,280,000), Mother Jones ($485,000), and National Public Radio ($1,800,000) all receive funding from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations.

At least seven Columbia professors have strong ties to Soros. Berman, French, Gitlin and Navasky, as well as full-time professors June Cross, Rhoda Lipton and James Stewart, have also directly received awards or funding from Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Navasky is also the chairman of the Soros-funded Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), a publication affiliated with Columbia University School of Journalism.

Mike Gonzalez, vice president of Communications for the conservative Heritage Foundation, is a graduate of Columbia’s Graduate Business School and a former Knight-Bagehot Economics and Business Journalism fellow. Gonzalez told BMI that while he had “tremendous appreciation for the Business School, and especially for the Bagehot Fellowship,” he refuses to give money to Columbia because the school hires people like Navasky.

Gitlin, is one of the most left-wing faculty members. A former Vietnam War protestor turned anti-capitalist spokesperson, Gitlin celebrated the rise of the Occupy movement which he defined as “chaotic, romantic and utopian.”

In his book, “Occupy Nation: The Roots, the Spirit, and the Promise of Occupy Wall Street,” Gitlin described the Occupiers as “amazingly intense” and said that “everything they did was, in my view, right.” He added that what impressed him the most was the “eruption of intelligence I encountered there.”

More than 7,700 of these “sweet tempered” Occupy protestors were arrested between September 2011 (when the movement began) and April 2013. Their charges included everything from sexual assault and violence to drug possession and vandalism.

Gitlin also pointed to Students for a Democratic Society as a positive influence on the Occupy Movement. SDS was an often violent, radical left-wing group born out of the anti-war protests in the 60s. Gitlin was a founding member of the group, and its third president. This is the same group that bombed a Chicago police memorial and instigated the “Days of Rage” riot in Chicago in 1969. An offshoot of the SDS, the Weathermen (later called the Weather Underground Organization), was classified as a domestic terror group by the FBI after they used bombings, robberies and arson to further their political agenda. Gitlin was president of SDS in 1963 and 1964. Ironically, Gitlin teaches an elective at Columbia called “Argumentative Journalism.”

Apparently Columbia likes hiring former SDS members. Columbia School of Social Work professor Kathy Boudin previously spent 22 years in prison for her part in a Weathermen armored car robbery that caused the deaths of two police officers.

In his book, Gitlin praised Occupy Wall Street as descendents of SDS, he described the Tea Party as “tax obsessed,” “wreckers and obstructionists” who “drove the country to the brink of debt default in the summer of 2011.” It’s worth noting that no Tea Party supporter has ever been arrested at any of its events to date.

Gitlin wasn’t the only Columbia faculty member who disliked the Tea Party. CUSJ professor and former New Republic Editor Thomas B. Edsall described the Tea Party as being part of “[t]his new age of brutishness,” in an article for The New Republic that came complete with an angry caricature of former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in military fatigues.

Navasky, Gitlin, and Edsall were typical of the Columbia Journalism faculty. Professor Dale Maharidge spoke out against Republican “code-language” and misplaced focus on social issues in an article he wrote for The Nation entitled “Rust & Rage in the Heartland.” Professor Betsy West was senior vice president for CBS News, but was fired after the “Rathergate” fabrication of President George W. Bush’s military records was exposed.

Even some of the faculty who don’t work for left-wing publications have been outspokenly liberal. Professor Emily Bell, in response to the Supreme Court hearing on California’s Proposition 8, tweeted her support for same-sex marriage as she attended a rally in Washington D.C., where she encouraged her 12-year-old to shout “wankers” at pro-traditional marriage supporters. She said she was “very proud” of him.

Professor Mark Hansen tweeted his dislike for Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act. Assistant Journalism Professor, and Director of Digital Media for CUSJ, Duy Linh Tu had one of the more politically outspoken Twitter users out of the full-time faculty, tweeting out things like “Mark Rubio loves his neighbors, especially if they love violence against women,” and the very to the point “Fuck the NRA.”

These professors have also been treated as experts by major news outlets, such as The New York Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, The Washington Post and USA Today, thanks to their status as Columbia faculty. Professor Thomas B. Edsall is a respected political commentator for The New York Times, using his position to publish attacks against the Republican Party’s “ideological rigidity, its preference for the rich over workers, its alienation of minorities, its reactionary social policies and its institutionalized repression of dissent and innovation.”

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Forty Percent (51 out of 127) of the adjunct faculty also work at left-wing news outlets and organizations. These include Kristen Lombardi, who wrote several pieces for the liberal Center for Public Integrity on how the fossil fuel industry was killing the environment; Charles Ornstein, who frequently writes for ProPublica about the benefits of socialized medicine and Obamacare; and Betsy Rate who produced several anti-George W. Bush videos for Bill Moyers.

Bill Moyers has repeatedly used his government-funded platform to promote a liberal agenda, including calling the NRA “venomous enablers of death,” and promoting a liberal “voting guide” for the 2012 election, which basically consisted of a series of articles on why readers should vote for Obama.

ProPublica stories are thoroughly researched by top-notch staffers who used to work at some of the biggest news outlets in the nation, but the topics are almost laughably left-wing. The site's proud list of “Our Investigations” includes attacks on oil companies, gas companies, the health care industry, for-profit schools and more. More than 100 stories are on the latest liberal obsession: opposition to drilling for natural gas by hydraulic fracking. Another 100 are on the evils of the foreclosure industry.

Conservative author David Horowitz noted in an article for the National Review on April 2, 2013, that over the past several decades, most the professional schools at Columbia have “reverted back to their religious origins, except that the doctrines being rammed down students’ throats without the benefit of opposing views are Marxist rather than Christian.”

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In 2011, Columbia University offered its highest honor, the Columbia Award, to Al Jazeera English. This was not only noteworthy because Al Jazeera has extensive connections to terror groups in the Middle East, but it was the first time that an organization, and not an individual, received the award. Columbia University School of Journalism Dean Nicholas Lemman called Al Jazeera English “a vital source of news on changing events in the Middle East and North Africa” that “offers unparalleled coverage of this region.” But this “vital source of news” has repeatedly bashed the U.S., Israel, and the West in general, while catering to terrorists.

Notorious for its anti-U.S. bias, Al Jazeera is the same “news” organization that, in 2008, threw a birthday party for Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar who had previously killed a police officer, a civilian and a 4-year-old girl. Amid the cake and fireworks, an Al Jazeera interviewer told the terrorist, “You deserve even more than this.”

Al Jazeera English was called out by liberal Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart for completely ignoring the incident when some 200 men sexually assaulted CBS correspondent Lara Logan during the “Arab Spring” celebrations in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. “Is that not newsworthy? I'm at a loss for what would drive a news network to ignore news,” Capehart wrote. AJE laughably responded that it “believes, as a general rule” that journalists “are not the story.”

Columbia Journalism School Adjunct Professor Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, who created, produced and cohosted Al Jazeera English’s show “The Stream,” serves as an adjunct assistant professor for CUSJ. He is also an alumnus. Shihab-Eldin also hosts “HuffPost Live,” where he often pushes an anti-Israeli agenda, including accusing Israel of “terrorizing” Gaza.

Al Jazeera English was awarded more than just the highest award that Columbia could give. It was also granted a fellowship, and allowed to host an episode of its show, “Empire,” with a guest panel of full-time CUSJ professors. The Al Jazeera English Fellowship, which was announced in 2011, sends two students a year to the network’s headquarters in Qatar. The students then work in an Al Jazeera English newsroom for 12 weeks. This is the first partnership with Al Jazeera English and a university in the United States.

CUSJ has also allowed a number of Al Jazeera hosts to speak as guest lecturers, including Marwan Bishara host of Al Jazeera English’s “Empire,” and Ayman Mohyeldin and Sherine Tadros of Al Jazeera Gaza, who’s lecture amounted to a very anti-Israeli report on the conflict in Gaza. Bishara is the senior political analyst for Al Jazeera and has written at least one article for Al Jazeera bashing the U.S. presence in Afganistan.

Both Al Jazeera Arabic and Al Jazeera English are owned by a member of Qatar's royal family and funded through loans from Qatar's government. Arab-language Al Jazeera has a history of strident anti-Americanism, of acting as a willing vehicle for Islamist propaganda, and of coloring reports to inflame Muslim opinion against the West.

In the aftermath of the killing of Osama bin Laden, AJE's website was filled with anti-American and anti-Israeli op-eds. Al Jazeera has run articles bashing Israel, comparing President Obama to Osama bin Laden, speaking out against capitalism, and protesting the war in Afghanistan and the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

Despite all of this, Washington State University dean Lawrence Pintak wrote for the Columbia Journalism Review (which is run by CUSJ) for May/June 2011, that “the political skew that colors some stories on Al Jazeera Arabic seems largely absent from Al Jazeera English.” Pintak gushed that, “with the Egyptian revolution, Al Jazeera English has come of age. The channel's 24/7 coverage had no English-language rival.” CJR pushed Pintak's article, calling Al Jazeera English the “balanced, thorough, and cosmopolitan cousin of Arab-centric Al Jazeera Arabic.”

Ayman Mohyeldin told Pintak how Al Jazeera Arabic views its audience. “The Arab viewer doesn't want just news, they want something a little bit more polemic,” explains Mohyeldin. “They want to feel they have someone who is fighting on their behalf.”

And Al Jazeera does nothing if not satisfy its audience. In 2003, then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld called its Iraq War coverage “vicious, inaccurate, and inexcusable.”

CUSJ listed Al Jazeera English and Current TV (which has been bought by Al Jazeera) as potential vendors at its upcoming jobs fair for 2013. Both were also in attendance for the 2012 jobs fair.

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Columbia University President Lee Bollinger is the liberal head of a liberal school. Attending the Soros-funded National Conference for Media Reform in Boston in 2011, Bollinger advocated for increased government funding of media. He argued the same point in a 2010 Wall Street Journal piece entitled “Journalism Needs Government Help,” and in his latest book “Uninhibited, Robust, and Wide-Open: A Free Press for a New Century.”

Bollinger argued that more problems arise from corporate funding than public funding of journalism. “Trusting the market alone to provide all the news coverage we need would mean venturing into the unknown – a risky proposition with a vital public institution hanging in the balance.”

“Indeed, the most problematic funding issues in academic research come from alliances with the corporate sector.”

Bollinger defended the university’s invitation to Ahmadinejad, although he denounced the Iranian president’s views when he introduced him as a speaker. Bollinger also invited alumni to celebrate President Obama’s inauguration in 2009, a celebration that made the entire semester “completely Obama,” according to a Fox News report from Jan. 18, 2009, entitled “Obama’s alma mater celebrates his inauguration.”

Bollinger also hires people with similar viewpoints. New America Foundation President and former managing editor of the Washington Post Steve Coll will take over as dean of Columbia University School of Journalism in July 2013.

Both Bollinger and Coll are Pulitzer Prize board members. These prizes have a tendency for being awarded for left-leaning journalism, with recent prizes going to outlets like the Huffington Post, ProPublica, Politico and InsideClimate News. They even awarded a Pulitzer Prize to Mark Fiore, a cartoonist who makes short clips bashing conservatives and their policies.

The New America Foundation has received more than $4.2 million in Soros funding since 2001. The foundation is a progressive non-profit public policy institute. Among the many examples of the foundation’s liberal worldview, New America Policy Writer Steven Hill in an article for The Atlantic, advocated doubling Social Security, claiming that the problem with the program was a shortage of benefits.

Coll is also the author of “Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power,” an “investigation” into ExxonMobil “outsized influence” in politics, and its “extraordinary corporate culture of discipline and secrecy” (according to the Amazon book description).

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One good indicator of the potential future bias of a school’s students is the one-sided nature of the school’s student publications. Columbia’s Journalism School has around 17 different student publications, depending on the semester.

Columbia University School of Journalism student publications took time to sing the praises of the Occupy movement – not surprising given Gitlin’s outspoken admiration for the Occupiers.

CUSJ’s student-led TV News segment, “Columbia News Tonight,” frequently covered the Occupy Wall Street protests favorably. “The movement has captivated New York City and the world with their protests against the one percent who control the nation’s money,” a Columbia News Tonight reporter said, before allowing Gitlin to pitch his book during a two minute “news” segment on Occupy Wall Street.

Consequently, Columbia’s anthropology department announced that they would be offering a class on Occupy Wall Street, including fieldwork. The class was later removed from the course offering list. “Columbia News Tonight” has also hyped liberal issues from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s sugary drink ban to minimum wage laws.

The “Columbia Journalist,” a student-run news website, praised Ahmadinejad for his call for direct talks with the U.S. on Iran’s nuclear program, saying that he was “often portrayed in the West as an erratic leader with eye’s set on Israel’s destruction.”

The Columbia Spectator, run by undergraduate students, quipped that “Columbia students said they are mostly used to hearing incorrect reports about their school from Fox News,” after Fox News ran a report on students attending lunch with Ahmadinejad, and wrongly stated that Bollinger would also be attending the event. The Iranian Mission rescinded its controversial invitation to the students, and the Spectator ran a follow-up article on how students protesting the event were overreacting.

This is not the first time that Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism has been called out for bias. An October 2012 panel comparing Occupy Wall Street to the Tea Party was criticized by Fox News for being stacked with liberal journalists.

In 2009, CUSJ students released “J-School State of Mind,” a parody of Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind,” which bashed the Fox News Channel, Sean Hannity and conservatives. The video was promoted on the website for the CUSJ run chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists.

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The Columbia Journalism Review claims that its mission is to “encourage excellence in journalism in the service of a free society.” But CJR frequently runs left of center articles, including repeatedly promoting the Occupy movement.

Columbia’s Journalism School publishes CJR, and provides it with facilities and staff, although the two are technically separate entities. The dean of the journalism school, Nicholas Lemann, also oversees CJR. Before becoming CJR Chair, Victor Navasky was editor of The Nation, a hard-left magazine, which has received at least $77,000 in Soros funding, as well as being a part of the Media Consortium.

On May 25, 2011, CJR called Soros “decidedly a supporter of quality journalism” and said that NPR “should not be ashamed” about its Soros funding. The Review also promoted a 2008 “Financial Times” article by Soros in which the billionaire argued for more government regulation and denied “the idea that markets are self-correcting.”

On February 19, 2013, CJR published a fairly ironic report bashing the conservative-leaning Donor’s Trust, while referring to (and agreeing with) a report which claimed that Soros’s Open Society Foundations and the liberal Tides Foundation were “markedly more transparent about where money comes from and where it goes.”

CJR has frequently written positive stories about the Occupy movement. One of these was written by a then-New York Times reporter who was dragged away by police while covering Occupiers in Zuccotti Park. He praised the Occupiers for “experimenting with new political formats, relationships and spaces.” Another very pro-Occupy story was written by a CJR reporter (and former assistant editor) encamped with the protestors.

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Columbia School of Journalism doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s part of a larger, liberal institution. Honored guests of Columbia University include such notable figures as Iran’s Ahmadinejad, whose arrival caused nationwide criticism of the school. Two students writing for the left-wing blog Alternet assured their readers that Ahmadinejad’s speech at Columbia University was “as American as Apple Pie.”

Six out of the 16 pages of the English translation of Ahmadinejad’s speech were filled with rants against Israel and a defense of his Holocaust denial. Ahmadinejad argued that questioning the Holocaust was as scholarly as testing laws of physics. The grammatical errors in the selections below are due to the translation.

“Can you argue that researching phenomenon is finished, forever done? Can we close the books for good on a historical event?”

“In the field of science and research I’m asking, there is nothing known as absolute. There is nothing sufficiently done. Not in physics for certain. There has been more research on physics that it has on the Holocaust, but we still continue to do research on physics. There is nothing wrong with doing it.”

“You shouldn’t ask me why I’m asking questions. You should ask yourselves why you think that’s questionable? Why do you want to stop the progress of science and knowledge?”

Soros himself came to the school to give the 2004 commencement address at the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. His commencement speech was largely a rant against then-President George W. Bush and the War on Terror.

He said, “[A] majority of the electorate continues to have confidence in President Bush on national security matters. If this continues and President Bush gets reelected, we must ask ourselves the question: ‘What is wrong with us?’”

From January of 2010 to April 2012 (the last month recorded on CUSJ’s website) there were 104 lectures. Twelve of those were made by faculty, and 27, over one fourth, were made by representatives of liberal organizations. That count does not include lectures by individuals from nominally objective (but functionally liberal) outlets like The New York Times and CNN. One lecture not counted as liberal was by Sarah Ellison, who worked for the generally conservative Wall Street Journal, but who led the fight to prevent Rupert Murdoch from buying that news outlet. There were no conservative guest lecturers during the time frame researched.

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Billionaire George Soros has strong financial, honorary and personal ties to Columbia. Soros’s Open Society foundations have given $9,708,486 to Columbia University since 2000. $1,250,000 of this money went directly to the Columbia Journalism Review. The school also received an additional $1.63 million from the liberal Tides Foundation, which Soros funds. Soros also gave the 2004 commencement speech for Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. This makes Columbia the third most Soros-funded school in the world, and the second most in the United States.

Soros has contributed more than $400 million to colleges and universities around the world, including money to most prominent institutions in the United States. Here in the United States, Soros money provides the foundation for liberal organizations promoting everything from gay marriage and drug legalization to anti-death penalty strategies. While his charitable giving goes to liberal organizations with close ties to the Democratic Party, his political giving goes almost entirely to Democrats.

Soros also has personal ties to the school. He dated Columbia University philosophy student and former Brazilian soap opera actress Adriana Ferreyr for five years. Ferreyr sued Soros in August of 2011 for $50 million, for failing to buy her an apartment in Manhattan.

Soros crony Jeffrey D. Sachs is the director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University. The Earth Institute focuses on climate change and the effects of humans on the environment, as well as on poverty and disease. According to The Earth Institute “about” page, “Human activity is straining the planet's resources, threatening the health of our environment and ability to thrive.”

The Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) is a research institute funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and affiliated with Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism until 2006. PEJ has been underwritten by the Pew Charitable Trusts, which have received at least $500,000 in Soros funding.

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Alumni of the Columbia University School of Journalism have gone on to work at dozens of influential news outlets, as well as many left-wing publications.

In 2012 alone, graduates went on to work at ABC, CBS, NBC, The New York Times, CNN, CNN Money and The Wall Street Journal. They also went to such left leaning outlets as Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera English, The Huffington Post, NPR, ProPublica, Slate and The Nation.

Famous alumni of the Journalism School include news anchors like CBS’s Steve Kroft (who gave an incredibly softball interview to President Obama on “60 Minutes”), “Good Morning America” anchor Josh Elliot, as well as editors for The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Huffington Post as well as a producer for CNN and the former CEOs of Newsweek and The Associate Press.

The Business and Media Institute contacted the school to try to attain numbers of how many alumni went on to work at each of these organizations. CUSJ officials told BMI that no such records exist at this time. Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism has graduated 12,642 students since its founding in 1912.

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With its substantial influence, Columbia has become a force to shape the future of journalism. Alumni have gone on to many prominent news organizations, but have often retained a bias that mirrors that of the faculty and donors of the school.

Nearly half (47 percent) of Columbia’s journalism faculty work for liberal publications. These publications are not just liberal leaning like the New York Times and MSNBC, but outspokenly websites and magazines like Alternet, Mother Jones and the Huffington Post. Columbia even hired the former president of a violent radical group as a full-time professor. These professors are instilling a liberal worldview in their students, who then go on to have jobs at respected news organizations.

This bias is consistent with the substantial amount of liberal funding that the school gets from George Soros and the Tides Foundation. Soros is a man on a mission: to promote liberal causes around the world. A school training the next generation of liberal journalists fits that mission exactly.

The “About” page of the Columbia University School of Journalism website says that the school provides its students with the opportunity “not only to succeed, but to shape the future of journalism.” By merit of their job placement alone, they definitely are shaping that future, but not in a positive way.

Recommendations for Journalists

The Business and Media Institute has the following recommendations for journalists writing about Columbia School of Journalism.

Extreme Bias Damages Credibility: The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics states that journalists should “remain free of associations or activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.” When citing or interviewing a Columbia alumni or faculty member, it is important to be aware of any left-wing connections he or she might have.

Do Some Genuine Journalism and Investigate Major Donors: Left-wing billionaires donating millions of dollars to any organization should raise some eyebrows. Since 2000, Soros has given more than $500 million to liberal organizations in the U.S., underwriting almost every major liberal initiative. News outlets need to invest both time and effort to examine these connections.

Recommendations for Columbia University

The Business and Media Institute has the following recommendations for how Columbia can repair its reputation as a premier journalism school.

Hire Conservative Professors: The SPJ Code of Ethics states that journalists should “Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and shun secondary employment, political involvement, public office and service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integrity.” Twenty-seven of the 40 Columbia University School of Journalism full-time professors work for left-wing publications, while only three work at the moderately conservative Wall Street Journal, and one is a Fox News contributor (who also writes for left-wing outlets). In order to remain balanced, Columbia should hire more neutral and conservative journalists.

Refuse to Give a Platform to Those who Support Terrorists: Columbia needs to stop catering to the blatantly pro-terror news network, Al Jazeera. When Columbia University, as one of the foremost schools for journalism in the nation, not only entertains but promotes a blatantly anti-American and pro-terrorist news network, it undermines the nature of journalism.

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